Brush Gun Stories

“I shot where the deer had surely been,
And bark came flying—oak, not venison.”

-Old Woodsman’s Couplet

By V. Paul Reynolds

When, during camp debates about good deer rifle calibers, somebody always says,” Yea, that .35 Remington is one helluva brush gun!” What does that really mean? Of course, that the round is big enough to slice off an alder branch or nick a beech tree and still stay on trajectory and, if you are lucky, still dispatch the deer.

We have all done it, right? You know, placed a .270 150 grain Nosler bullet perfectly in the center of an 8- inch spruce tree instead of the intended target- an 8-point whitetail buck standing broadside.

One of my deer camp buddies, Phil, in his early deer hunting days, did just that. His mistake earned him a camp nickname, that is with him to this day: “Spruce.”

Logger and outdoor columnist Joel Tripp writes about the fabled Stump. It was a deer hunting hotspot for his father and his hunt buddies, back in the days when so many hunted with shotguns and buckshot. Legend has it that when he was a kid, more deer were shot from that stump than anywhere else in the family woods. By the time Tripp was old enough to take up his first deer vigil on that celebrated stump, he was most enthralled by all of the spruce trees that had been topped off in circle not far from the stump. After close examination he came to the conclusion that they had been trimmed by buckshot over the years.

Once a wounded black bear eluded me after my 7mm 08 round lost its shape and punch after shaving off the side of a hemlock on its way down range to my bear. This fall, while bow hunting deer, my fixed broad head, intended for a standing crotch horn, short stopped itself in an old blow down. On the other side of the coin, I have bow shot a deer after my arrow first passed through the fabric of my camo ground blind! It was a typical 10-pointer that hangs on my wall to this day.

Perhaps it’s a case of tunnel vision or buck fever, but in neither of the above encounters do I recall ever having actually “seen” the obstacles between me and the deer in my sights.

Contrary to precedent, here is a latter-day brush gun story that beats all, and has a happy ending. Avid deer hunter Tyler Strasenburgh, who has taken his share of deer with both gun and bow, was hunting one of his favorite deer runs this fall with his .308. when a young buck appeared, not too far off. Strasenburgh found the deer’s vitals in his scope’s cross hairs and squeezed off the shot. Pow! A perfect bullseye dead center – through a tree. Yep, another doggone spruce tree.

Figuring that he had really blown the shot when he hit the tree, Strasenburgh was nonetheless delighted and surprised to find a significant blood trail. The wounded deer, hit in the vitals, traveled a way but the thankful hunter recovered the dead deer a short time later.

You wonder in this unusual case whether the caliber, the .308 and the particular ammo used, Federal Power Shok, made the difference. Or was it just plain serendipity, sheer luck?

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